Tim Otto Roth
X
Bio4Comp
Can you introduce yourself?
One of my core interests as conceptual artist and composer is the concept of space and how it changes, if you are confronted with it visually or acoustically. Visually I am interested for instance in shadows translating spatial information in a very specific way. With regards to acoustics I am interested to use space as an instrument using the topology as a kind of synthesizer. If I distribute in a space for instance tone generators producing sine waves, the space changes into an additive synthesizer mixing the tones to a site specific sound changing depending on the position of the audience.
Can you present your project SMART>SOS?
Technically the project works with a novel bio computing method developed by the Bio4Comp collaboration: It uses on a sub-sub-microbiological level “worm” like molecules travelling in a labyrinth-like silicon channel structure. For SMART>SOS I am designing an own circuit with a flower like topology bringing feedback into play. Finally, this circuit can be experienced in action as a video and sound installation: Here the activity of the molecules will function as a kind of synthesizer composing out of individual sine tones a continuously changing sound atmosphere.
What do you expect from this residency?
Foremost, I am looking forward to exchange with scientists from very different fields. Here I can discuss my project idea conceptually, but also confront it with a material reality under the microscope. In Dresden I have started with Till Korten to play with various geometries, where for instance slight variation of the gradient of a curve might have severe effects on the flow of agents and consequently on the computational result. Here I hope to learn a lot by the confrontation of the worlds in silico and in vitro, speaking a silicon switch based physical computation versus a computation with a quasi-biological system. Finally yet importantly as a composer, I hope that the network structures finally will produce more than Brownian motion but create some spatio-temporal patterns. I think we are on a good way with some novel designs to tweak the systems into that direction.
Find more about Tim Otto Roth project here
Crédits: Imachination, Miriam Seidler
Till Korten, Center for Molecular Bioengineering, TU Dresden and Tim Otto Roth in Dresden
